FEAM is a member of a consortium of 32 partners that implemented the Periscope project. PERISCOPE stands for “Pan-European Response to the Impacts of COVID-19 and future Pandemics and Epidemics” -a Horizon 2020 research project that was funded with almost 10 million Euros under the Coronavirus Global Response initiative launched in May 2020 by the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The goal of PERISCOPE was to shed light on the broad socio-economic and behavioral impacts of COVID-19. A multidisciplinary consortium brought together experts in all aspects of the current outbreak: clinic and epidemiologic; socio-economic and political; statistical and technological.
The objectives of PERISCOPE are:
FEAM contributed to nine of the fourteen work packages (WP), and led WP 11, focused on Training and Education.
With the help of its partners, FEAM focused on addressing the evolving educational needs of healthcare professionals, following the organisational and technological changes brought by the pandemic. A wide network of stakeholders supported the development of content and the validation and implementation of teaching modules in online platforms.
Among other activities, FEAM also contributed to (1) mapping and assessing impacts of COVID-19 on health inequalities and indirect health impacts; (2) identifying best and next practices towards innovative public policies for resilience and sustainability; and (3) drafting holistic policy guidelines for health authorities.
FEAM contribution to PERISCOPE
In light of FEAM membership, composed of 24 Academies of medicine, pharmacy and veterinary sciences, FEAM brings its expertise to better understand the impacts of COVID-19 on health, with a strong focus on health inequalities, indirect health impacts and health governance at various policy levels.
In May 2020, FEAM set up a group of experts, composed of Fellows from our member academies, to support FEAM’s participation in PERISCOPE. Group members provide guidance and help steer research direction; review reports; and participate in meetings with consortium partners and external organisations to discuss interim results and next steps.
Within PERISCOPE consortium, FEAM coordinates a working group on health inequalities formed by Mental Health Europe (Belgium), university of Ghent (Belgium), London Schools of Economics (UK), INSERM (France), Karolinska Institute (Sweden). As part of the project first year’s requirements, FEAM led the running of a workshop on “COVID-19 health inequalities in Europe” which main discussion points were extracted from and plugged in into an interim analytical report on health inequalities with emphasis on vulnerable groups. For the next two years of the project, FEAM will be channeling partners’ contributions resulting in a final report on the same topic.
If you are interested in knowing more about health inequalities, please find below the follow-up materials:
To take stock of and render visible everything produced under the PERISCOPE’s umbrella, FEAM is coordinating the wok package on training and education seeking to develop six online training courses for different audiences. FEAM will develop one of the six training courses on the One Health concept together with Karolinska Institute, the European Hospital and Healthcare Federation (HOPE) and the University of Pavia. FEAM will be mobilizing its network to propose a module with the purpose of fostering cross-sectoral collaboration across the One Health pillars (i.e. animal health, human health, environment health).
Addressing the multi-level governance functioning is a key aspect of PERISCOPE. Considering its broad research topics’ coverage, it can really investigate the deep causes of policy blockages and gaps that arose during the onset of the pandemic. Therefore, FEAM’s role is to bring the biomedical dimension into this overall analysis. FEAM will be developing a paper on the European Union’s Health governance before and during the COVID-19 context. In addition, and based on its membership, FEAM will draft a case study on the implementation of COVID-19 related policy measures in various European countries.
Duration of the project: 36 months (1 November 2020- 30 October 2023)
